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Tag: Defining Moments

  • Long-Term Success and Quality Leadership Hinge on Authenticity

    Long-Term Success and Quality Leadership Hinge on Authenticity

    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    To say that we have collectively experienced massive turmoil and upheaval since 2020 first arrived would be an understatement of the highest measure. Lessons learned from the pandemic, and the roller coaster that it was in our personal and professional lives, highlight the critical nature of genuine, steadfast leadership.

    When challenging and chaotic times occur, emotionally intelligent leadership is essential to ensure safe passage across choppy seas. This critical nature of a steady hand at the helm rings true for small businesses and large corporations alike. While the scale may differ, the core element remains the same: people.

    Long-term, quality leadership hinges on the ability to keep the humanity of business a central component of all operations.

    Related: How You Can Build a More People-Centric Workplace

    Humanity drives business

    Every aspect of the business and customer relationship, whether directly or indirectly, impacts individuals. It’s important to step back from the point of sale or moment of service and see the layers of men and women connected to those single moments.

    1. The consumer who is due quality products and service.
    2. Shareholders expecting profitable — and sustainable — results
    3. Senior leadership tasked with guiding the bigger picture
    4. Team or departmental heads charged with implementing the vision
    5. Every employee in their ranks, inspired to take on the challenge
    6. The family and social connections every individual represents

    When running a business, it’s natural to zero in on the transactional moments that represent the viability of our business or brand. Quality leadership remembers the bigger picture and what it takes to get there, to that moment when the product or service is fulfilled.

    Amplify this process fivefold, tenfold or a thousandfold and that one thing remains: the humanity of it.

    Related: 5 Ways Emotional Intelligence Will Make You a Better Leader

    Employees deserve authentic respect in challenging times

    In business, challenging seasons are inevitable; there is no avoiding that reality. And while the size and scope of the issue will vary in correlation to an organization’s size, the experience is felt the same for every employee.

    A company may have hundreds or thousands of employees; a small business may have a baker’s dozen. Regardless, the workforce encompasses men and women who deserve leadership anchored with authentic respect.

    Authentic respect as a leader is defined by the simple truth that we are all in this together. Small business leaders may experience this reality in a more tangible way, as the natural divide between employee and employer logically expands with every stage of company growth.

    When operating with authentic respect, leaders navigating challenging seasons choose transparency over opaqueness, with intentional communication and connectedness driving adaptive, creative problem-solving.

    Related: 7 Ways to Stay Resilient in Uncertain Times

    Avoiding empathy just for empathy’s sake

    Any business leader striving to guide their company through an arduous period may be tempted to dive into the deep end of empathetic and intentional support without having earned it or knowing how to achieve it effectively.

    Employees are instinctively aware of inauthentic support done seemingly for show and little else. If clumsily attempted, well-intended measures of communicating care and fueling connection can prove ill-fated and counterproductive. Forced efforts exacerbated by poor research or being rushed into action can derail positive momentum.

    Amidst tumultuous times, one-on-ones with employees and regular, alternating team and departmental meetings can be an excellent means to retain awareness and understanding. The larger the company, the more complex the system may be to ensure every individual receives proper care and support.

    Conversely, scheduling one-on-ones or more frequent team meetings and having no game plan for effectively utilizing the time can drain away the impact of a well-intentioned check-in.

    Perhaps your game plan is to listen if an employee or team member needs to vent about the stresses and challenges they’re experiencing. Having an awareness of your goals with any effort is essential to ensuring a positive, sustained impact on employee and company morale.

    Related: Inspire Loyalty With Your Leadership: Here’s How

    Leading with assured authenticity, transparency and vision

    Nothing in business is accomplished without the individuals making it happen, the men and women who are the lifeblood of a company. Any leadership position is a privilege; it’s an opportunity to guide career paths and company trajectories. An awareness of this foundational truth is crucial to tamping down any potential for overly inflated egos that can derail leadership development.

    Leading during challenging times is a wholly different level of challenge and reward. It requires higher levels of flexibility and creativity, demands authentic interpersonal skills fueled by empathy and necessitates open and active communication channels.

    Your employees will look to you as their leader to provide clarity and confidence. You may not have all the answers, and your vision for the path forward may be a work in progress. If confidently communicated on wheels of authenticity and transparency, the light at the end of the tunnel will be all the brighter.

    Related: Power With Purpose: The Four Pillars of Leadership

    Summit Ghimire

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  • What Makes an Idea Great? These 3 Key Elements Are the Answer

    What Makes an Idea Great? These 3 Key Elements Are the Answer

    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    Having spent many years in the sports world, I often find that sports ideas and business ideas are not that different. During a time when I was serving as a coach in a girls’ lacrosse program, I was asked to help a team that had just had a series of tough games.

    Morale was low. My coaching friend and I knew we had to inject energy into them, so we came up with a cheer called the Heart and Hustle chant. It goes like this:

    Coaches: H-squared!

    Players: Heart and Hustle!

    And repeat until everyone’s pumped up.

    Simple, right? We instituted this little cheer and suddenly these young girls — about 12 years old — got fired up. The team was playing as I had never seen them play before. The chant invigorated them and they powered through.

    They won in more ways than one.

    Fast forward to today, and that chant is still shared by every team that comes through that lacrosse program — which has expanded to over 400 girls playing in any given year. There’s a Heart and Hustle tournament, Heart and Hustle T-shirts and in my last year in the program, I received a necklace from a group of players with an H2, which represents — you guessed it — Heart and Hustle. It never ceases to amaze me that a simple cheer grew from one team and spread across the entire organization.

    What does this have to do with business? Everything.

    Great ideas run the world. But what makes an idea great? When I think back on that cheer and then on my current career, I think there are three key elements: authentic desire, channeled energy and receptive people.

    Related: Authentic Leadership: What Is It and Why is it Important?

    You can’t fake authenticity

    There are fake intentions everywhere — and believe me, they don’t stick. We can intuitively feel whether an idea is coming from an authentic place.

    Getting an idea to stick starts with not focusing on sticking but on fueling an intrinsic desire to be of service. I’m convinced that’s why so many successful businesses describe themselves as people-focused or human-centric and then follow up those words with action. A team that truly wants to make a positive change in the world or really values its company mission will inherently be more impactful than one backed only by flimsy, half-hearted slogans.

    Focus on your best

    We all know (and love) those happy-go-lucky people who always seem cheerful and optimistic. Maybe you’re one of them. But while that kind of positivity can be extremely helpful in creating a welcoming work environment, it won’t make or break a company.

    You create force and movement when you channel your positive energy into the best projects with the highest priority. Scattering your motivation into too many projects leaves every project without the momentum needed to deliver true impact. This responsibility often falls on management. Your team may have 10 fantastic projects they’d like to ideate on, but if you only have time for three realistically, you’re doing all 10 projects a disservice by not channeling your energy. Choose your best projects and put everything into them.

    Related: How to Employ a Team That Shapes Your Company Culture

    Build the best team

    It’s often difficult to know when a team member simply isn’t the right fit. Sometimes it’s a matter of skills, but often it’s something beyond a list on a resume.

    A team member with average skills who shares your vision will work far more effectively than one who has exemplary skills but doesn’t care. When you’re building your team, seek prospects who lean in when discussing your company’s mission. These employees will pick themselves up after an unsuccessful campaign, get back to work and try even harder to reach shared goals next time. These kinds of people are often the ones who come up with the ideas that stick.

    Related: How to Craft the Perfect Recipe for Persuasive Storytelling in Your Presentations

    There’s no recipe

    Part of what makes ideas stick is having the perfect blend of circumstances that allows all of those three components to come together — along with other far more nebulous elements like timing, community attitudes and trends — which is part of the reason why not all ideas stick. Even good ideas. So what can you do to make sure you get ideas that stick? Focus on the elements you can control and bring them together as frequently as possible.

    There’s no perfect roadmap and certainly no instruction manual. But getting the best people together to share their authentic desires toward a shared goal, with targeted focus, puts your team and your business in the best possible place to stir up those world-changing ideas. As a leader, that’s the most important part of my job: to create the best atmosphere I can and encourage creativity, spark and a free flow of ideas. That, to me, is heart and hustle.

    Amanda Rogers

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  • How Proptech Is Disrupting the Real Estate Industry

    How Proptech Is Disrupting the Real Estate Industry

    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    Over the last two decades, the real estate industry has experienced significant changes. These changes are due to the influx of new technologies and advancements that benefit many stakeholders, including agents, brokers, developers, property managers, investors, homeowners and entrepreneurs. The name that we give collectively to the synergy between technology and real estate is proptech.

    Below are the four most significant ways in which this innovative technology has disrupted the real estate industry.

    Related: Property Tech Is Creating An Incredible Real Estate Opportunity for Entrepreneurs

    Enhancing transparency

    The lack of transparency and sometimes accountability has been a long-standing problem in the real estate market, with no easy solution. At the same time, solving this challenge is of utmost importance as real estate concerns everyone. All of us need places to live in, work at and so on.

    However, the root of this problem lies in the very nature of real estate. As such a large market (currently valued at $3.69 trillion), real estate has sizable capital requirements that few can traditionally afford. In addition, although it may not look this way from the outside, the real estate space is rather limited and only accessible to a relatively small number of professionals. For the average person, real estate processes and deals have always been notoriously convoluted and obscure.

    Thanks to the changes it’s been bringing to the residential and commercial real estate market, proptech has made major advancements in this regard. The accelerated access to data, widespread use of technology tools and enhanced feasibility of fractional property ownership have largely contributed to growing transparency and accountability in the industry. Real estate trends, analyses, deals and operations are now much more transparent than just a few short years ago.

    Related: New Real Estate Technology: Disruptive Ideas Transforming the Industry

    Providing real estate access to just about anyone

    Proptech’s contribution resulted in another major disruption in real estate. By enabling data, analysis and investment access to the average person, proptech has opened the door for just about anyone to enter and participate in the industry.

    With the help of tech-based tools, even those with limited knowledge and experience can take part in real estate transactions. For example, the advancement of CRM, analysis, virtual reality and deal-closing online platforms has lowered the barriers to entry for real estate agents and brokers. As a result, the number of licensed realtors in the U.S. alone increased from 1 million in 2011 to 1.56 million in 2021. This is a growth of more than 50% over the course of only ten years.

    Similarly, while investing in real estate has always been a tempting idea for millions of Americans, many were left out of this profitable strategy due to a lack of sufficient financial resources, market knowledge, data access or even time. In the last decade, we have seen a surge in the number of technology tools that address each of these challenges and more. Therefore, we can expect the number of small-scale, beginner real estate investors to grow exponentially in the coming years.

    Related: This Tech is Disrupting Real Estate. Don’t Miss Out

    Breaking the monopoly of big players

    On the flip side, another way that this innovative technology is changing the face of real estate is by putting an end to the monopoly of big players. Traditionally, real estate has been dominated by a few large corporations and moguls that control each aspect of the industry such as development, brokerage, investing, market analysis or property management. The reason is simple — very large barriers to entry that only some could cross.

    As smaller players are now able to participate across the different segments of real estate, this is inevitably challenging the dominance of the traditional major stakeholders. While they might understandably feel threatened by this flipping reality, it will be beneficial for everyone if the industry becomes more accessible, transparent and democratic. The entry of new players will inevitably lead to accelerated growth within the industry, thus opening more opportunities for everyone involved.

    Boosting productivity and profitability

    Last but not least, proptech has forever transformed the way of doing business in real estate by raising productivity and profitability. This is arguably the most significant advantage that disruptive technology has brought to real estate professionals.

    Investors, for instance, formerly needed months of research, data collection and analysis in order to find a single profitable deal. Now with the help of certain real estate tech tools based on big data and AI, they can locate good deals within a few minutes — whether they are interested in residential or commercial properties, the ownership of entire buildings or parts of properties.

    Similarly, being a landlord and short-term rental property host used to resemble a full-time job between writing contracts, dealing with tenants, setting up rental rates, collecting rent, managing finances and all of the other tasks. Now, there are dozens of platforms that help automate and streamline the rental property management process.

    The day-to-day work of agents, brokers, property managers, lenders and others has also been expedited and facilitated in a similar manner. The end result is that real estate professionals — as well as amateurs — can complete their duties much faster and more efficiently, all while making more profitable decisions about how to operate their businesses.

    Final words

    As a firm believer in the importance of technology across the board (but especially in real estate), I am confident that we are far from reaching the full potential of disruption in this industry. I expect these four proptech trends to continue developing in the coming years. , And, new disruptions will continue to emerge as so many entrepreneurs are eager to carry on with the democratization of real estate.

    Zain Jaffer

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  • 5 Ways to Clear Your Mind and Be Your Most Productive Self

    5 Ways to Clear Your Mind and Be Your Most Productive Self

    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    You can be in flow one day and out the next. While earning my doctorate, I worked full-time while running a business and engaging in a dysfunctional marriage. I had committed to doing everything I had set out to do with no consideration for the impact of the pressures on my life.

    But one day, I found myself unfocused and uninterested in completing my work. I sat at the computer for a while, but nothing came. I couldn’t produce. Does this sound familiar? If it does, you have experienced a mental block.

    Related: 7 Unexpected Ways to Get Around Mental Blocks

    Spotting the signs

    I was in the middle of my doctoral program with tons of papers to write, but I was stuck. It lasted for days. Although that was the first time I had experienced a mental block, it wasn’t the last.

    I realized I was prone to mental blocks when I was engaging in long periods of mental stimulation, experiencing prolonged stress, and in a highly creative period. Here are some signs to watch out for in yourself:

    • Feeling frustrated and overwhelmed
    • Trying to push through to finish a task but feel stuck
    • Difficulty completing any tasks that required me to think, strategize or create
    • Trouble producing anything of high quality
    • Finding it hard to describe how you’re feeling and what you’re experiencing

    One of the hardest things about experiencing a mental block is that it cannot be seen, which makes it hard to identify. Furthermore, a mental block can happen to anyone, varies in length and can happen at the most inconvenient time. They can range from acute to severe.

    Related: 7 Mental Blocks Preventing Your Success

    Contributing factors

    Several factors can contribute to mental blocks. Some of them include:

    1. Mental exhaustion: As in my case, I was overworking my brain muscles all day and night by constantly engaging in creative activities. I was experiencing mental fatigue from excess decision-making. My life was structured so that all decisions had to pass through me and couldn’t be delegated to someone else. My brain was exhausted.
    2. Lack of sleep: With 24 hours in a day, eight were dedicated to my full-time job, six were going to my business, two were for traveling back and forth and three were used for cooking, bathing and spending time with my family and friends. On average, this schedule left me with five hours each day to sleep. The recommended amount of sleep per day is six to eight hours. I was not giving my brain enough time to rest to function correctly.
    3. Environmental disorganization: Your workspace should reflect the clarity you want when working. When my environment is in disarray, I have the most difficulty focusing on a task. When I earned my doctorate, I was in a dysfunctional marriage. My ex-husband was verbally abusive and battling drug addiction. He would often throw fits and destroy the apartment. On days I would arrive home, items would be all over the floor and out of place. I would need to leave home to think clearly. This was one of the contributing factors to my staying so busy and out of the house as much as possible.
    4. Impostor syndrome: I doubted my experience and abilities at the highest level while earning my doctorate. It felt like I was in an in-between space where I had years of professional experience, but I didn’t feel like an expert in my field. This led me to question my abilities and hesitate before writing a paper. I wanted everything I submitted to be perfect and I feared judgment. So instead of creating, I would find myself stuck on validating myself.

    Related: 6 Powerful Ways to Get Out of a Mental Slump

    Overcoming a mental block

    Once you can identify the root cause of your mental blocks, that is half the battle. The next half consists of taking some actions to help overcome it so you can accomplish your goals. Here are a few things to try:

    1. Turn up your physical activity: This is my go-to anecdote. We are full of energy, and mental blocks are created when that energy becomes stagnant. Engaging in regular physical activity helps prevent and remove blocks that occur. Physically, exercise pumps blood to the brain, which can help us think more clearly.
    2. Grab a coloring book and start coloring: Coloring is relaxing and allows you to get your creative juices flowing without using much brain power. It can help your brain and body relax to improve brain functioning. When coloring, various parts of our brain’s cerebral hemispheres are activated.
    3. Schedule your sleep: Putting your sleep on your schedule helps to regulate the amount you get. By getting more sleep, your brain has time to relax.
    4. Meditate daily: Meditation is a powerful tool that can help us remove distractions and negative thoughts. It helps us to get in touch with our subconscious mind and release the thoughts holding us back. It also produces peace within us, which helps us gain clarity in any situation.
    5. Tap into music: Music can serve as a form of therapy to help us process emotions and act as a calming agent. Listening to music also has incredibly positive effects on our brains.

    The most important thing to remember when feeling stuck is that stepping away from what you are working on is always an option. Take some time to relax and shift your focus. After all, continuing to work will only frustrate you, which is never helpful. Instead, take the time to try some of the suggestions above.

    Fanike-Kiara Young

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